site.btaPresident Decrees April 4 as Parliamentary Election Date

January 14 (BTA) - President Rumen Radev has decreed  
April 4, 2021 as the date for the next parliamentary elections.
 In a televised address to the nation on Thursday, Radev noted  
that April 4 is a week after the earliest possible date. The  
last week before the elections should be utilized as fully as  
possible, he urged.

Radev expects that in the months left until the ballot, all  
institutions, including the Parliament leadership, "will work in
  a way that guarantees the health and the voting right of every
  Bulgarian citizen and leaves no doubt that every vote will be
 properly counted."

The President sees a need to amend the Election Code. He noted  
that the changes should not be limited to guaranteeing the  
voting right of COVID-quarantined persons. "The lawmakers should
  also consider other proposals which are not less important
than  that, such as postal voting for Bulgarians abroad, video  
surveillance in voting sections, online streaming of the vote  
count and fair access to the media during the election  
campaign," he said.

As soon as Radev announced the election date, the ruling GERB  
party urged him to stop sabotaging the election process by  
inspiring distrust in it. "The President's transformation from a
  mouthpiece for the parliamentary opposition into a mouthpiece
 for the extraparliamentary opposition should not be allowed to
undermine public confidence in the elections," Toma Bikov MP
commented during a briefing.

Although GERB is basically OK about the election date, the party
  worries that it will coincide with the Catholic and Armenian  
Easter. The incumbents urged the President to explain why he
gave up on March 28, which he named earlier as voting day.

Bikov stressed that GERB will not table any of the changes in
the Election Code that the President proposed.

Georg Georgiev, head of GERB's youth organization, said that if
the opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and the Movement
for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) decide to reconsider their
position against fundamental changes in the election
legislation, they can table Radev's proposals, but GERB will not
 support these. In his words, such an approach would destroy the
 trust in the election process and would serve unclear
interests.

"We have gotten used to him [President Radev] drawing dividing
lines," Georgiev said. According to the incumbents, the
President is trying to create chaos, to instill unwillingness to
 vote in people.

BSP deputy leader Atanas Zafirov commented for BTA: "BSP is
always ready  for elections. What is more, BSP is ready to win
these  elections." According to Zafirov, it is possible to make
reasonable changes to the Election Code before the upcoming  
ballot, provided that things are organized well.

MRF leader Mustafa Karadayi commented in a Facebook post that
the biggest challenge to the elections is working amid the
COVID-19 pandemic. "We have a lot of work and each one of us
knows what to do," the post reads.

The power-sharing VMRO party said in a press release that it
accepts the date April 4, but does not accept the attempts at
radical changes in the election legislation. "The idea for
postal voting creates a huge threat of distorting the election
results under the pressure of one foreign country: Turkey," the
party argues. "That would give neo-Ottoman [Turkish President
Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, who has on numerous occasions expressed
his cordial claims over parts of Bulgaria, to organize the
sending of votes even by Bulgarian citizens who have passed away
 decades ago," the VMRO said. A foreign country's interference
in elections in Bulgaria is a huge threat to national security,
the party believes.

The VMRO expresses the hope that the President's proposal for
postal voting is not a deliberate plan for creating an MRF-BSP
majority in the next parliament. The VMRO confirms its position
on principle against last-minute changes in the Election Code.

RY/VE, DS